Lace Vengeance
Eve Dangerfield
To V.
For getting me through.
Prologue
Teresa Calderoli
It’s three inthe morning and rain is hitting the windows like it’s trying to break them. The screams shattering the house for the last forty hours have stopped. The silence is worse. Evelyn Blay-Whitehall has been in labor for two days and there’s no sign she’s close to birthing. I hurry up the hall, my arms piled with the last clean towels in the house and climb the wooden staircase. I go as fast as I can and it makes my knees ache, as it always does these days. I turn for the master bedroom, and I bump right into a woman.
“Sor—” I start, but when I see who it is, my apology dies on my lips. It’s Corinne Hawthorne, Mr. Whitehall’s assistant.Eh mannaggia, what is she doing creeping around the house past midnight?
“I was here to deliver a contract to Mr. Whitehall,” the girl says, as though reading my mind. “Nicholas invited me to spend the night so I wouldn’t have to drive home during the storm.”
“Of course,bella,” I say, avoiding her eyes. I’ve seen her and Mr. Whitehall together, their heads bent close, whispering and laughing.
The girl shakes out her blonde bob. “I mean it. Nicholas and I had important business to discuss.”
“Of course,” I repeat.
She blinks and I see her realize she’s justifying herself to a housemaid. Her face relaxes. “Where are those towels going? To the master bedroom?”
“The doctor needs them,” I say, sidestepping the girl. “Let me know if you want pajamas or anything else.”
I don’t expect her to respond but she reaches out, grabs my shoulder.
“One thing,” she says in the voice of those who’ve always had maids and drivers and people like me to assist them. “Has Evelyn had her baby yet?”
I don’t want to answer, but it’s the fastest way I can think to get past. “No. Not yet.”
“And do you…” she asks delicately. “…think she will?”
I look into the girl’s wideset blue eyes. They lend her a deceptive innocence that doesn’t fool me at all. I picture the dark room down the hall, the doctors and midwives huddled around the four-poster bed and dread curdles in my stomach like bad milk.
“I don’t know.” I raise the towels like an explanation. “I have to go.”
“Sure,” Corinne calls after me. “I hope Evelyn’s okay.”
I continue down the hall, my stomach churning. The girl worries me. Her entitlement. That she feels completely at home wandering around her employer’s house, asking questions about his wife. She is a woman without character. A viper who wears Grace Kelly’s face. She wants Nicholas for herself and with Mrs. Whitehall trapped in bed, slowly bleeding…
But I will not think of the worst. I won’t let it enter my head.
I reach the master bedroom. The room smells of blood and I’m transported back to Foggia, to watching my mother and Zia’s bring children into this world. But never for this long and never this violently.
I give the towels to a helpless-looking nurse and as I do, I catch a glimpse of Evelyn’s face. She’s pale as the sheets around her and her lips are almost blue. She moans, a low animal sound and fear that flashes through me like the lightning forking the sky outside.
Mr. Whitehall is arguing with the doctor. “Call an ambulance. Get her to the hospital and give her a c-section.”
“It’s too late,” the doctor says. “She can’t be moved and the baby’s too far gone. She’ll have to keep going.”
I don’t realize I’m performing the sign of the cross until I’ve tapped my right shoulder. It doesn’t matter what I think now, what I will or won’t allow myself to imagine. The doctor’s sweat-spotted brow says it all. Death is coming tonight. The question is will it be the mother, the child, or both?
Mrs. Blay-Whitehall knew her baby was in breech, but she’d given birth at home three times, and she didn’t want to be away from her other children. I think of them, Margot, Harris, and Lachlan lying asleep in their beds. Will they see their mother tomorrow? Will they see her ever again?
Evelyn screams, but the noise has a desperate, whistling note, like a balloon losing air. The fresh towels are laid down, the nurses circle like crows.
